Fiction
May 2024
Lift
The Rise of Mathe-Lingua-Musica
by Ray Anderson
With Earth on the brink of total annihilation, can a new universal language unite the world enough to save it? It’s 2422 and the world’s governing mathematicians have calculated that society’s struggles with rampant war and homicide have put humanity on a crash-course with extinction. With an estimated fifteen months left until humankind’s total annihilation,the World Council of Mathematicians (WCM) determine the only way out of the crisis is to create the optimum language for humans, creating common understanding across all cultures and allowing them to work together for their joint salvation. The WCM and Charles De Costa, a brilliant mathematics student, must rely on LIFT, a scientific breakthrough that allows them to enlist the aid of the greatest minds in history, to create this new world language based on mathematics, linguistics, and music. Can the great minds of the past help lead humanity to a better future? Can this new language be created in time? Or will society’s continued evil and miscommunication lead the world to an inevitable end?
